Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is the writer and director of , his eighth movie. Biography Quentin Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Connie McHugh Tarantino Zastoupil and Tony Tarantino. Growing up with his mother, they moved to Torrance, California in 1965, where he showed an early interest in drama. Tarantino dropped out of high school at the age of 15, instead attending full-time acting lessons at the James Best Theatre Company. At the age of 22, Tarantino worked at a video rental store Video Archives, where his fascination with films and cinema grew stronger. In 1987, Tarantino co-wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday, which took four years to shoot, and starred himself and Craig Hamann, his co-writer. The film's budget was merely $5,000, and ran for 70 minutes. Due to a fire, 34 minutes of the original cut were destroyed. Though it was poorly directed, Tarantino refers to the movie as his "film school." His next project, Resevoir Dogs, was written in three-and-a-half weeks, and was finally screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1992. Immediately a success, 1993 saw the release of Tarantino's screenplay True Romance, with Tony Scott as the director. Tarantino wrote the first draft of Natural Born Killers, which after a few revisions, was released in 1994. Tarantino received credit for the story. Turning down offers from Hollywood, Tarantino instead wrote the screenplay for Pulp Fiction, which was released in late 1994 and got Tarantino his first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with his co-writer, Roger Avary. He followed the win with a script titled From Dusk till Dawn, which was directed by his friend Robert Rodriguez. After the completion and release of 1997's Jackie Brown, Tarantino started working with Uma Thurman, who starred in Pulp Fiction, on the script for Kill Bill. In 2005, Tarantino was credited as a "Special Guest Director" for Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of the graphic novel Sin City. In the movie, he directed a car sequence starring Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro. His fifth project was a double-feature collaboration with Rodriguez, titled Grindhouse, which served as an homage to 1970's slasher films. The film was divided into two works, first was Rodriguez's Planet Terror, followed by Tarantino's Death Proof. Part of the project was the production of fake movie trailers, which were later developed into full-length movies. , at the 2009 Academy Awards.]] Tarantino's sixth movie, Inglourious Basterds, was in the works since the production of Pulp Fiction in 1994. Starring Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz, the film was an immediate hit, becoming Tarantino's highest grossing film. Christoph Waltz, who played Colonel Hans Landa (also known as"The Jew Hunter"), went on to win numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Tarantino commented, "I think that Landa is one of the best characters I've ever written and ever will write, and Christoph played it to a tee… It's true that if I couldn't have found someone as good as Christoph I might not have made Inglourious Basterds." Tarantino confirmed in 2009 that volumes 3 and 4 of Kill Bill will be released in 2014, yet before he begins writing, he intended to write and release Django Unchained. ''Django Unchained'' Tarantino described the film as "a southern" - some sort of a spaghetti western set in America's Deep South. He decided focus on the issue of slavery, as America never features it in movies, "because it's ashamed of it." ''Future Projects'' Tarantino has said that he had plans of making a Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction spin-off, The Vega Brothers, focusing on Vic Vega from Reservoir Dogs, and Vincet Vega from Pulp Fiction,'' ''but he faced the problem of the two characters both being killed on screen, he later stated that "it probably won't happen'. He has said he has plans for his next movie being more "Jackie Brown"-esque is in mind, meaning that it would be more tamer than his others. There is no news on what it could possibly be about, but he says it will be "smaller than Django Unchained". In late December of 2012, he revealed plans for an Inglorious Basterds spin-off, entitled Killer Crow, the story will concern a group of black soliders during World War 2, after being left for dead, they begin to number off American soldiers, slowly making their way to their base camp. It is currently set for a 2015 release date. Filmography Trivia *Director Quentin Tarantino revealed at Comic-Con that Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington's characters are meant to be the great-great-great-grandparents of the character John Shaft from the Shaft (1971) films. An overt reference to this connection can be found in Washington's character's full name: Broomhilda Von Schaft. Tarantino